1882049- Modification of Payment Method and File Format for a Bank Account

Symptom

By default a payment file format (e.g. DTAUS) is maintained for one of your bank accounts. Now you want to switch to another format (e.g. SEPA). However, when executing a payment run or triggering a manual payment you do not succeed in generating a file exhibiting the new format.

Reproducing the Issue

You created a bank transfer either by executing a payment run in the Payables work center or by manually creating that payment for a payables items. Now you generate the bank file for transferring the resulting amounts.

Go to either the Payment Management or Liquidity Management work center.

Navigate tot he Payment Monitor view.

Choose candidate payment(s) in status Ready for Transfer.

Go via Actions for Bank Transactions and choose Create Payment File.

As a result the status of the payment will be In Transfer. Under Payment Data in the header data you observe that Payment Method Details and Payment Medium do not show the expected SEPA format.

In case a payment file has been generated you also notice that the file is not in SEPA format (e.g. DTAUS).

Cause

For the purpose of this document the payment file format SEPA is used synonymously with other alternative payment file formats. Various settings in the Business Configuration as well as the bank master data have to be maintained properly in order to produce a payment file in the desired format in a given scenario.

Resolution

As a pre- requisite for applying the new format SEPA has to to be configured as a viable format in the Business Configuration.

Go to the Business Configuration work center.

Navigate to the Implementation Projects view, mark the First Implementation project and press Open Activity List. From here go to the Fine Tune phase.

Find and open the Outgoing Bank Transfers activity. If your system is live already you can find and edit this activity from the Business Configuration Overview via Change Immediately.

Here SEPA has to be maintained as a valid payment format at least in the categories Payment Correspondence Profiles, Payment Medium. Formats and Country Groups.

Another necessary requirement is to maintain SEPA as a payment format in your banking and bank account master data.

Go to the Liquidity Management work center and choose My Banks in the Master Data view.

After the payment format formats have been saved on house bank level you can assign the desired format to house bank accounts under Bank Accounts and tab Payment Method. It is recommended to maintain here only one of the major payment formats for each bank account (SEPA only instead of DTAUS and SEPA).

In addition to that settings have to be maintained again in the Business Configuration in order to prioritize payment methods and the resulting file format depending on applied business scenarios.

Go to the Business Configuration work center.

Navigate to the Implementation Projects view, mark the First Implementation project and press Open ActivityList. From here go to the Fine Tune phase.

Find and open the Global Settings for Payment activity. If your system is live already you can find and edit this activity from the Business ConfigurationOverview via Change Immediately.

Under Payment Method Priorities you define a global prioritization for relevant localizations.

Make suitable entries under Prioritize Bank Accounts and Payment Method based on Amount and Prioritize Bank Accounts and Payment Methods in order to facilitate the desired payment method and format depending on an applied business scenario.

Starting with version 13.02 a monitor Bank and Payment Settings: Bank Transfer has been introduced which summarizes relevant settings for payment methods in one screen. You can access this view by editing any bank transfer which is not in status Confirmed in the Payment Monitor view. Via the tab Business Configuration Data you can directly access the relevant settings by clicking Open Activity.